“And He said to them, ‘How can they say that the Christ is the Son of David?’”
— Luke 20:41 (NKJV)
At this point in Luke’s Gospel, a noticeable shift occurs. After Jesus answers the Sadducees regarding the resurrection, Luke notes that His opponents no longer dared to question Him. The silence is telling. It suggests not intellectual defeat alone, but hearts unwilling to press further into the implications of what Jesus was teaching—implications that demanded surrender rather than self-preservation.
It is precisely here that Jesus initiates His own line of questioning. And the question He chooses is not incidental. He asks them to reconsider their understanding of the Messiah: How can the Christ be merely the Son of David?
This question cannot be separated from what immediately precedes it. Jesus has just addressed two challenges—one political, one theological—both revealing underlying heart postures shaped by a fixation on the temporal age.
The earlier question about paying taxes to Caesar was motivated by a desire to trap Jesus and preserve social standing. The Sadducees’ hypothetical scenario about marriage in the resurrection sought not truth, but reinforcement of their own theological position. While the tactics differed, the root was the same: hearts oriented toward maintaining control within the present order.
In response, Jesus consistently redirects attention. When speaking of taxes, He distinguishes between what bears Caesar’s image and what belongs to God—between the finite and the eternal. When addressing the resurrection, He explains that the structures governing this age cannot be projected onto the age to come. Again and again, Jesus exposes the insufficiency of interpreting reality exclusively through temporal categories.
These encounters reveal more than flawed arguments; they uncover unsurrendered assumptions. And Luke presents them not merely as historical observations, but as mirrors—inviting readers to examine similar dispositions within themselves.
Jesus’ question about the Messiah presses this tension even further. By challenging the notion of the Christ as simply David’s son, He confronts a deeply ingrained expectation of a Messiah defined by lineage, power, and earthly continuity. Such an expectation, while rooted in Scripture, had been narrowed by temporal imagination.
Jesus invites His hearers to lift their gaze—to consider a Messiah whose authority transcends dynastic succession, whose kingdom is not bound by time, and whose reign cannot be reduced to political restoration. The Messiah they had constructed was too small, too bound to this age.
Throughout Luke’s Gospel, the kingdom of God consistently takes precedence over earthly kingdoms. Jesus remains unwavering in this priority, persistently reframing the present through the vantage point of eternity.
This reorientation has profound implications for how we think about legacy and stewardship. If the questions posed to Jesus were shaped by an overinvestment in the temporal, then so too can our planning, our giving, and our vision for legacy be subtly governed by the same impulse.
Legacy stewardship easily becomes an exercise in preservation—of wealth, influence, reputation, or control—rather than an act of surrender aligned with the kingdom of God.
Jesus’ teaching suggests a different framework. Legacy is not defined by what extends our name into the future, but by what bears God’s image and advances His eternal purposes. Stewardship, then, is not merely about distributing assets wisely within this age, but about aligning resources, intentions, and priorities with the age to come.
To emphasize the eternal is not to neglect the present. Rather, it is to understand the present rightly—recognizing that what is temporal finds its meaning only when placed in service to what is everlasting.
Jesus’ question still confronts us. If He devoted so much of His teaching to reorienting hearts toward eternity, then legacy stewardship must be shaped by the same emphasis. Only when the Messiah is understood in His eternal fullness can our stewardship reflect more than this world—and participate meaningfully in the one to come.
By Christopher L. Walker at myfathersestate.com
